Here's a review by my eldest son:

I just watched STARWARS CLONE WARS VOLUME 1 and it’s not good. Well, I don’t think so. The new computer animated one’s better. I think they should’ve given the clone troopers more personality. They didn’t fail that in the new computer animated series. By the way I’m 9 years old. I think they made their lines to short, & didn’t bother givin’ ‘em a stronger accent . In STARWARS CLONEWARS VOLUME 2 they gave them more personality, but still not as good as the new computer animated series. The new computer animated series is AWSOME!! ...by the way.

Avatar

I saw AVATAR with my wife. We agreed that Cameron has created a beautiful and interesting world, but she lost her suspension of disbelief during the second-act crisis while I kept it going right up to the end credits.

I think that where she saw a simplistically anti-military romanticization of neolithic culture, I saw a golden age of science fiction, Edgar Rice Burroughs - type story brought to life. This is "Astounding Science Fiction," illustrated by Frazetta and rendered in fabulous 3-D.

So what if the story is standard pulp? This is pulp done right, filled with treats for science fiction fans (Sigourney Weaver taking on "the corporation," a Vasquez - type character kicking butts, multiple nods to _Dune_ and other classics of the "warrior gone native" subgenre), astoundingly beautiful environments for the spectacle - seekers, and good old-fashioned Hollywood liberalism for everyone else.

You wanna see a completely realized alien world? Here ya go. You wanna see stuff blown up real good? Here ya go. You wanna revel in a favorite genre's pulpy past? Have at it. AVATAR offers all these delights, and in spades.

I got what I paid for.

La Dolce Vita

I need to see every Fellini movie in the catalogue.

8 1/2 is the best film I've ever seen. LA DOLCE VITA makes the top 10. I'm having a Kurosawa moment, a time when a filmmaker blooms in my consciousness as a major, defining force; a time when I realize that I must seek out an entire oeuvre, consume it, internalize it. If these two pictures of Fellini's are so earth-shakingly brilliant, I must discover what else is out there.

Fellini's meditation on what actually constitutes "the sweet life" is beautiful, insightful, silly, and profound. Marcello Mastroianni (Fellini's Mifune) is at his most charming and shallow best, and he anchors a picture that says nearly everything there is to say about the disconnect between who we are, who we think we are, and who we want to be.

What a magnificent picture.